


I'm Afraid of Americans

by kla1991



Category: Person of Interest (TV), Warehouse 13
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Gen, Machine 13
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-15 06:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5774494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kla1991/pseuds/kla1991
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ramblings of an ex-NSA agent with a brain tumor lead Myka into the middle of a conspiracy. She escapes the men sent to kill her and joins forces with Helena Wells, the only other person who knows the truth: they are being watched.</p><p>Note: This piece is on hold indefinitely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter of this was composed as a Bering and Wellsmas gift for phoenix-cry on tumblr. I'll be adding a few chapters, essentially introducing the characters and dealing a bit the first season of PoI. The complexity of the full show isn't something I can manage on my own; if anyone else would like to add to this universe, please feel free. 
> 
> Another note: there is no Joss Carter or Carter equivalent in this, because she is inimitable, and also because WH13 is buried in white people, so I don't have many options.

            Myka wasn’t trained to be alone. When the Manhattan night is cold and damp, and every stranger passes too close to her, all Myka wants is a partner.

            All she wants is Sam.

            The improvised stitches in her side are holding, but if someone pops out of the shadows again, if they come at her now, she won’t be able to hold them off long. Under better circumstances, she’d have rested in some safe little hole somewhere. In these circumstances, nowhere seems safe enough, and the flash of gunfire and blood won’t let her rest anyway. So she keeps moving.

            Sam had warned her.

            “It’s nonsense, Myka,” he had told her. “The man has a brain tumor, he’s just blowing hot air.”

            “Then why does he need us? If it’s all nonsense, why are we guarding him like he’s the goddamn national mint?”

            Sam had shrugged. “If he’s revealing state secrets, they’re secret for a reason. It’s not our job to know.”

            But Myka couldn’t live with not knowing. She asked around, quietly, about a name: Samaritan. Samaritan had led her to Northern Lights, to surveillance conspiracy theories and a dead nuclear engineer named Joshua Donovan. It was around then that Myka saw the first dark suited man loitering at the corner near her apartment building in DC.

            A hacker named knkknk13 told her about William Wolcott before disappearing into the depths of the internet as suddenly as they’d come. It worried Myka, both that this hacker had found her, and that someone might have found them.

            “I’m being followed, Sam,” she’d told him one night, too agitated to drink, to have sex, to even sit down. She’d made him leave his phone in his car, had thrown hers down a gutter hours ago.

            Sam had sat on his bed, watching her pace, while she explained just how far down the rabbit hole she’d gone.

            “It’s not our job to know,” he’d said.

            “But I do.” Myka glanced at the curtained window of the bedroom, the hair on the back of her neck standing even more on end than it had been, because she was certain she was being watched. “I do know, and I can’t just turn my back on that.”

            For a moment, it was quiet. Sam rubbed his face, stared at the floor, and finally, finally, nodded.

            “You’re right. We can’t.”

            He was reaching for her when the gunfire poured through the window. Myka was facing forward, hit the floor and took shelter under the bed just in time. Sam was shot in the back. Myka still wasn’t sure how she’d escaped, how she’d lived long enough to reach Manhattan. She’d just grabbed her gun and—

            _Car, three o’clock_ , she notices, lurching back into the present. She skitters into an alley, takes cover behind a dumpster and draws her gun.

            Nothing happens for so long that Myka thinks maybe nothing will. Then there’s a knock on the far side of the dumpster, and a light, accented voice says, “Don’t shoot.”

            Myka comes out from behind the dumpster, gun still drawn, and a slight, pretty woman meets her, hands in the air. Her face is in shadow, and Myka hates that her own face is completely visible in the streetlamp light.

            “Get on the ground,” Myka orders.

            “I’d rather avoid it if we cou—“ Myka advances, noticing too late the way the woman limps as she staggers back, and shoves her to the ground.

            “I’d rather avoid shooting you.”

            The woman winces and settles herself on the wet gravel while Myka digs out a small flashlight and shines it in the woman’s face. What she sees doesn’t improve the situation.

            She’s seen this woman before. There had been half a dozen pictures throughout her search.

            “You’re Helena Wells. You worked with William Wolcott.”

            “Yes.”

            “You _died_ with William Wolcott, in the ferry bombing.”

            Wells gives her a wry smile and says, “You died with your partner, Sam. Or rather, shortly after. The morgue in DC confirmed it.”

            Myka lowers the gun and the flashlight, trying to think that through. She can’t imagine how someone could fake a death with no body, no evidence, not even the participation of the victim. It takes her longer than perhaps it should to remember her parents, her sister. Her family thinks she’s dead.

            “What did you do?”

            “The best I could,” Wells answers. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to warn you. To…”

            She doesn’t finish the sentiment, but Myka understands. This woman saved her, but she couldn’t save Sam.

            “Are you the hacker?” she asks.

            “No.”

            It’s a simple answer, but the reaction on Wells’ face is more complex than Myka can parse. There are traces of curiosity, bewilderment, and, in the way her eyes flit toward the street, probably more than a little fear. But it all settles quickly into that soft, intelligent gaze that she’s been fixing Myka with the whole time. She’s lying in the mud with a gun and a light in her face, staring up at Myka like she understands.

            When was the last time Myka had eaten, or slept? She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t have any answers, and she doesn’t know what to do.

            “Agent Bering,” Wells murmurs, reaching out to her.

            Myka wishes she could have taken Sam’s hand, that one last time. She wants to take this woman’s now.

            But first, she has to know.

            “Why did this happen?”

            “Because you know what I know,” Wells answers. “We are being watched.”


	2. Chapter 2

            “Great,” is the only thing Detective Lattimer says when he finds Myka fighting off two guys while a terrified lawyer cowers behind her. “Another one.”

            Myka manages to get a good glare in before her opponents square up again. Lattimer helps, which is honestly more than she’d expected from an NYPD officer, even one that Wells insists is a friend. He carts the hit men away in his patrol car, and Myka doesn’t bother asking questions that night. Wells wouldn’t have answered them anyway.

            That’s going to become a fight one of these days, but not now, not when the numbers keep coming and Myka’s starting to get the hang of this vigilante thing. For now, Wells doesn’t need to be trustworthy, as long as she keeps being right.

 

            “Todd Owens, age nineteen,” Wells announces the second Myka’s in her sights. “He’s a computer technician, Apple certified, has a few online courses under his belt. He was born and raised on Staten Island, moved to Manhattan to work in his uncle’s computer repair shop. No criminal record, no problems in school, no complaints at work. No anything of any merit, really.”

            She waves a hand at the board in front of her. Myka takes a closer look, asking, “Any unsavory friends? Hackers, maybe?”

            Wells shifts in her squeaky chair, and Myka remembers the uncertain look on her face the night they’d met. The hacker who’d helped her: could that have been Todd?

            “He has a Facebook, Reddit account, Twitter, the usual. Most of the friends I could identify went to high school with him. No one stood out, but of course I’ll keep digging. For now…”

            Myka turns just in time to see her drench a beat-up laptop with tea.

            “Could you take this down to Owens Brothers Tech Depot for me, darling?”

 

            Owens Brothers Tech Depot is a tiny affair, maybe fifteen feet wide, with a dirty glass front, a long counter with a register at one end and various computer innards scattered down the rest, and a pegboard on the opposite wall covered in various cords. Myka notes the closed office door at the back, marked “Employees Only” in stern black vinyl letters.

            Todd, a scruffy-haired hipster with glasses, comes out of the office, spots her, and groans.

            “I already told the other guy, I don’t know anything!”

            Myka raises an eyebrow. “That’s a bummer, because I was hoping you could help me with this.”

            She holds out the laptop, and Todd turns red. He listens to the problem, nodding and inspecting the laptop as Myka explains.

            “So who’s been hassling you?” she slips in while she has his attention, before he can give her a timeframe and send her on her way.

            “Yeah, sorry,” Todd says, embarrassed but trying (badly) to play it off. “Just some guy… uh… I-I thought you were a cop. Sorry.”

            Myka makes a note to work on her “not-a-cop” vibe, finishes cloning Todd’s phone, and heads back to the street.

            “Hey Wells,” she says into her earpiece, “this kid’s got cops up his ass, you sure there’s nothing shady going on here? Money laundering, drugs?”

            “I know someone I can ask. Perhaps you can take a look at his apartment, check for anything not related to the business?”

            “Yeah, sure, I’ll…” Myka trails off as a bald white man in sweatpants tromps past her. The guy really needs to work on his “not-a-criminal” vibe. A quick scan of the street shows another man in a car across the way, watching out of the corner of his eye. The bald man pulls open the door to Owens Brothers. Myka tries to sync his phone, but she can’t get a signal in time. She loiters at the curb to watch, but the bald man trundles out of the shop with an HDMI cable, crams himself into the car across the street, and the two men drive away.

 

            Todd’s apartment turns up nothing, and Lattimer says he won’t get back to them until that evening, at best, so Myka heads back to Owens Brothers around closing time, to see what she can see.

            The bald man is back, sweating like a hog and, as Myka notes as he swings open the door to the tech store, carrying a pistol.

            “Got a problem,” is all Myka conveys to Wells before running after him.

            “Give me your money!” is out of the bald man’s mouth before Myka even gets in the door. Mr. Owens peeks out of his office, and Todd is clawing at the cash register. Myka’s entrance, and furthermore her athletic takedown of the would-be robber, takes all three of them by surprise. The bald man ends up on the ground, his gun in Myka’s hands.

            “I’ve called 911,” Wells says through the earpiece. “Shouldn’t be long, just keep things under control.”

            And that doesn’t seem like it’ll be a problem, until the window behind Myka shatters. She throws herself onto the floor in a rain of glass and bullets. Mr. Owens is gone, probably out the back, and the office door is hanging open. Myka crawls to the far end of the counter, where Todd has curled up to hide.

            “Through the office!” she orders him. The man from the car is headed toward what’s left of the front door. When Todd doesn’t move, Myka drags him, shooting to slow their attacker down.

            “How do we know there isn’t another one out there?” Todd asks.   
            “We don’t!” Myka tells him, and dives through just as Detective Lattimer pulls up in a squad car.

            Myka Welty becomes the official alias for dealing with the police. They question her for a little less than an hour, because Welty is a cubicle rat at an insurance company who didn’t see anything. Detective Lattimer pats her on the back as she leaves.

            “Nice save,” he tells her. “Tell Lady Cuckoo we’re putting the kid in witness protection, so we’re all good.”

            “That wasn’t a robbery,” Myka says, as if it weren’t obvious.

            “No, that was John Conte. Kid saw some things he shouldn’t have on a computer, apparently.”

            “John Conte the mobster? You think you can nail him with what the kid knows?”

            Lattimer doesn’t answer.

 

            “You can get more info out of these files than the police, right?” Myka asks Wells. “Locations, dates, IP addresses? Anything that could lead us to John Conte.”

            “We have another number.”

            “So turn whatever you find over to the police.”

            Wells turns her chair to give Myka the full force of her scowl. “And who shall I say this tip is from? The FBI, Homeland Security? That’s the level of technology you’re asking me to use, and someone _will_ notice. At any rate, John Conte is not a ‘mobster.’ He’s an intermediary between various gangs and crime families, a negotiator of sorts. His work causes fewer incidents to happen in this city, not more.”

            “Unless he’s using the information from those mediations against them,” Myka persists. “He was willing to kill three people to make sure no one knew what was on that hard drive, maybe he wants to move up in the world.”

            Wells rolls her eyes and grumbles, “Fine. You start working on our number, and I will _consider_ reviewing the information that Todd obtained.”

            It’s a fair deal, so Myka sets out. The number’s a simple issue, comparatively; nothing knocking a guy’s head can’t solve. When she gets back to the library, Wells has combed through the hard drive for clues. Nothing of interest, she insists, except one email she’s still trying to decode. She closes it after giving Myka barely a glance, but it’s enough; Wells doesn’t know about Myka’s eidetic memory.

 

_It’s not enough._ The thought bounces around in her head while the clock on her nightstand counts steadily toward three o’clock in the morning. She’s hunched over a copy of the coded email she’d written out from memory, trying to solve it, because every answer matters, and every life matters, and god, Myka has to do more than just scoop the victims up one by one while others get washed away in a riptide of violence.

            It’s been two months, and Sam follows her like a dog snapping at her heels. Wells has no idea who killed him, or so she claims; there’s no way to fight back, no way to protect anyone else. Myka can’t stop them. But she can stop Conte, and maybe that will be enough.

            By six thirty, the email’s uncoded, and Myka has names and a location. If she leaves now, she’ll be just in time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I'd post once a week, but then I had school for about two. Sorry. I'm back.

            Myka walks out of her apartment and straight into Detective Lattimer.

            “Whoa, Queen Victoria said you might be running off somewhere,” he says. “And she actually sounded worried. I didn’t know she had feelings.”

            It’s a rude thing to say, and normally Myka would call him on it, but all she wants to do right now is scream; Wells isn’t supposed to know where she lives.

            “Look, Detective…”

            “Pete. You’re Meeka, right?”

            “Myka.”

            “Myka?”

            “Look, _Pete_...”

            It shouldn’t surprise her that he keeps talking.

            “So how’d you meet Lady Cuckoo, anyway?”

            “I kicked her ass,” Myka snaps, because it’s more satisfying right now to imagine it that way, and maybe he’ll be intimidated.

            “You’re not the one who put her in a dumpster, right? I found her in a dumpster, man, and all I could think was, ‘Do I look like Claire Temple?’”

            Myka has no clue what he’s talking about, so she gets to the point, as loudly and firmly as she can: “Are you here to help or to get in my way?”

            Pete shrugs. “What do you got?”

 

            Conte’s plan is almost elegant, despite being suicidal. He negotiated a deal between the Russians and the Irish for transportation of a truck full of… well, he didn’t need to know the details, and Myka shudders to think. Where the shipment arrives, and when, and how many men will be guarding it, though, are all details that Conte helped work through personally, which makes him fully capable of hitting it and stealing the shipment. Revenue from the shipment plus negotiations to stop the gang war such a big screw-up would cause should be plenty for Conte to skip town, as long as everything goes to plan.

            Todd getting questioned by the NYPD had not been part of the plan. No way is Conte stupid enough to try it now, with the police breathing down his neck, but Myka has everything she needs to show up in his place.

            Her plan is to take pictures.

            “That’s it?” Pete asks while they creep into position, behind a row of shrubs at the edge of the road.

            “Would you rather try to fight seven guys at once?”

            “I mean… kinda. I was imagining more Daredevil, less Peter Parker. That’s the way Her Majesty usually swings.”

            Myka raises the camera, adjusting the focus, and asks, “You know I don’t understand what you’re saying, right?”

            “I’m saying, this plan seems pretty low-risk for all the bad vibes I’m picking up. Can’t you feel it?”

            “Feel what?” Myka mutters, as the truck pulls in and a chill grips her.

            She gets two pictures before the shooting starts. Conte hadn’t bothered with cover, just rolled up and hit hard and fast. His men are right across the street. Stray bullets are thwacking into the bushes above Pete and Myka’s heads.

            There aren’t many places to go. Pete’s car is several yards away, in the parking lot of an old factory. To the left and right is open pavement and overgrown weeds, where anyone could see and shoot them. Directly behind is the factory itself, raining dust and shattered glass into the pit below as the guns keep blazing.

            Myka sizes up the pit. It’s about three feet deep, with a ramp for bringing deliveries into the basement, but the ramp is outside the cover of the shrubs, too exposed to reach. So Myka grabs Pete by the collar and dives straight over the edge. Her camera and her wrist both shatter when she hits the concrete floor of the pit, sprinkled with garbage and old leaves. Pete’s okay, though, and he kicks through the basement door and drags them both through the factory and out the other side.

            “And now I know why Lady Cuckoo was worried,” Pete growls while he fumbles for his car keys.

 

            Wells won’t look at her when she shuffles into the library, unable to hide the cast on her wrist. Boots on the desk, chair tilted back, Wells stares into the middle distance with a hand near her chin; Myka could almost pretend she’d caught the woman daydreaming, if her face weren’t made of granite.

            “Have you done it?” she asks. “Are you a superhero now? City safe, all children well fed and tucked under the covers.”

            Myka stares at the patch of floor where the carpet is almost gone and the plastic strings of the underside are showing through. The bottom of a carpet is about what she feels like.

            Wells gestures grandly in front of herself, still gazing ahead.

            “Behold my mantel, above the fireplace in my tasteful mansion! Framed newspaper clippings read: NEW YORK CRIME DOWN EIGHTY PERCENT, LONDON SEVENTY-THREE. WORLD TERRORISM A THING OF THE PAST! Here’s me in a photograph, shaking hands with world leaders. In the center I’ve got my Nobel Peace Prize, nice and posh. Do you see it?”

            Myka looks up, to see if this question needs an answer. She watches the hard lines of Wells’ face slump from fury to quivering earnestness.

            “I changed the world, Agent Bering. Didn’t quite go to plan. Honestly, I… I don’t think I had any right to do it.”

            “But we have to try!”

            It’s out of Myka’s mouth before she even thinks it, but she grits her teeth and stares Wells down anyway, because it’s the truth. The woman still won’t look at her. She puts her fingers to her lips for a moment, thinking, before she answers.

            “What is it that we’re doing here, Agent Bering, if not trying? What is it about this that’s so unsatisfying to you? The world needs leaders, true—visionaries who march fearlessly into a future they only imagine they can see, because they can’t stand to look at the present any longer. It’s a powerful thing, to stand up and demand more of the world. Brilliant as you are, I imagine you were told that you could be one of them, that humanity needed people like you to do great things for them. But the fact is, these numbers, these people… they need you, too.”

            Enraged again, she flings herself out of her chair, snatches a photograph down from the board across from her desk, and shoves it into Myka’s hands.

            “Jeanette Hardison, 53, sanitation worker in Queens. _She_ needs you! If you do what no one else can, and save her life, she might even thank you. Is that good enough for you?”

            It’s terrifying, the molten fury in Wells’ eyes, but Myka’s only grateful that she’s making eye contact again, staring her in the face and making her stand tall instead of sinking into the carpet. She looks into the other woman’s eyes for so long she finds the desperation in them.

            Wells needs her, Myka realizes, and says the only thing she could possibly say: “Yeah, Wells. That’s good enough for me.”

            After a long breath, Wells makes her way back to her chair, settles in to finish the debrief as normal, but her fingers pause over the keys as Myka comes up behind her to see the screen.

            “Helena,” she says. “You can call me Helena.”


End file.
